I was talking about this with @lucreziaborgia earlier, and I’m really over people lauding Chapuys as some sort of feminist ahead of his time just because he supported Mary.
a) Having a special affection for one woman doesn’t preclude a man from misogyny,
b) He was about as misogynistic as any other 16th century European man (in his case, from the Duchy of Savoy). He wasn’t anachronistically so, but he still absolutely was.
There’s this tendency to dismiss some of the worst things he said about Anne Boleyn as, “well, those aren’t tones of misogyny, he just didn’t like her because he thought/believed she was threatening Mary”.
That could be a strong point, if he didn’t casually disparage another woman, too.
His initial reports of Jane Seymour were basically “she’s kind of ugly, and too pale, and probably not even a virgin so like…we’ll see.”
Of course, once he found out she interceded on Mary’s behalf he gushed about how she was a mediator, gentle, “we stan” etc. but like…
That he so readily made snide remarks about a woman’s physical appearance and gossiped about his own ideas about her chastity does constitute misogyny, and there’s no getting around that.
A Marian blogger once made a very good point (I’ll have to scrounge it up later) that we see Mary distancing herself from Chapuys once she’s reinstated at court and not being as big a source for Eustace as she had been formerly.
Of course, this is in part because she no longer was so desperate for help and guidance, but it also begs the question if she came to believe (true or not) his advice had hurt her cause more than it helped. It’s a very interesting question to debate, and one that’s always resonated with me.
Chapuys wasn’t a cartoon villain, but neither was he an infallible bastion of morality. There’s this tendency to portray him as either the Tudor Gossip Girl or, my ~favorite, as one who was So Above the English court and their “backwardness.” If he was either, he likely wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did as the Imperial Ambassador to England.
Anyways, you make great points re: his misogyny toward Jane. I believe he also made a remark it must have been Jane’s capacity in bed that captivated Henry, although I may be confusing that with another envoy. Chapuys may have had genuine fears about what Anne could have been capable of doing to Mary in her height of power, but it’s undeniable hysterical misogyny fed into that.
16th century men will be 16th century men.
Chapuys does seem to have been genuinely fond of Catherine and Mary, but his political support of them was because they were the aunt and cousin of his employer, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Charles had dispatched Chapuys to England to smooth over Henry’s bid for an annulment so that he could keep good relations with England while also ensuring the dignity of two of his mother’s relatives (which is more than he ever did for his own mother, but that’s another story). Chapuys’ stalwart loyalty to the Habsburgs came from his belief that the Habsburgs would check the Valois kings’ ambitions to incorporate the duchy of Savoy into France. (After all,
François I‘s mother, Luisa, was a member of the House of Savoy.)
Chapuys at several points seems to have wanted Charles to declare war on England, but this was something Charles could not afford to do because he already had made stalwart enemies in the kings of France, the Ottoman sultans, and around half of the German princes and wasn’t in the position to make more.
Yeah, I’ve read “Henry was LUCKY that KOA didn’t give Charles the go-to to invade England!!” a couple times honestly; and it’s always a trip because he wasn’t really in a position to do that anyway…as is clear by the evidence.
The idea that Karl would have jumped if his aunt snapped her fingers is equally laughable. He was BUSY with a lot of stuff (being Holy Roman Emperor, king of Aragon, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, duke of Burgundy etc meant he had a LOT of stuff to do) and that he wouldn’t have ACTUALLY done anything is proved by how quickly he and Henry reached an accord after Katherine died. On one hand, Karl was defending Katherine’s “honor” as family, but I strongly doubt he would’ve supported an invasion (he’d be supporting a wife in disobeying her husband which would have run counter to the thought of the day – that a wife was to be dutiful, obedient to her husband in ALL things (which you see in Katherine’s defense in court against Henry “Milord, I have been a dutiful and obedient wife. I have borne you children, though it has pleased God to take them from us”). Hence, why I think that Karl would have been as likely to jump and send an invading army as his aunt would have been to ask for one).
“Karl” 😂
But yes, what’s also odd is the idea that Spain was somehow light-years ahead of England in terms of female rule, given what happened with Juana of Castile…
There’s also the small geographical concept of England being, you know…an isle surrounded by water. Feasibly, it was actually a lot less risk to break from Rome in England than it would’ve been in, say, France, given that it would be easier to invade its borders. One imagines that if Charles V invaded England, he would a) claim it for himself, and b) that France would, in turn, invade Spain in his absence.
Besides which, Charles was very fairweather in this respect (even according to Chapuys himself)– it seems all his promises and blustery indignation for KOA and Mary was all, or nearly all, for show– lip service, as it were:
And then, after KOA’s death:
He might have had a special affection for her; but I think this sums it up well– still she was a ‘pawn’. It’s pretty revealing that they were willing to risk spiriting Mary away from England , who was young and the heiress inheretix in their eyes (rather than KOA) and legitimate in the eyes of the rest of Europe at this point– both for her safety, and likely to marry her to someone else eligible and powerful to perhaps reclaim England at some point in the future; that is, if Henry never had a son considered legitimate by the COE.
And it’s also pretty revealing that, even though this was still what Mary herself wanted– to leave England– Chapuys himself changed course and backed out of that promise.
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